Pierrick Le Brun has announced the release of Zenwalk Live 6.0, a live CD edition of the popular Slackware-based distribution: “Zenwalk Live 6.0, the latest Zenwalk in a live CD format, is ready! Based on Zenwalk’s current repository, Zenwalk live 6.0 is an almost perfect clone of the latest Zenwalk 6.0 with the addition of the latest security patches and bug fixes. Zenwalk Live 6.0 uses version 6.2.9 of the Linux-Live scripts and its kernel 2.6.28.7 is patched with Aufs, Squashfs and LZMA with sqlzma. Our native utilities, LiloFix and LiveClone, have been entirely rewritten in Glade/Python and new functionalities have been added to LiveClone. If you’ve just recently migrated to Linux, a beginner’s guide will assist and guide you through all the basics.” Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: zenwalk-live-6.0.iso (686MB, MD5).

Slackware has now gone 64-bit with an official x86_64 port being maintained in-sync with the regular x86 -current branch. “We’ve been developing and testing Slackware64 for quite a while. Most of the team is already using Slackware64 on their personal machines, and things are working well enough that it is time to let the community check our work.” DVDs will be available from the Slackware store with the release of Slackware 13.0.

NetSecL is a security-focused distribution based on Slackware Linux. To improve the security aspect of the distribution, servers have been removed, incoming ports closed and services turned off. Additionally, a set of penetration tools has been included.

Iuri Stanchev has announced the release of NetSecL 2.4, a hardened, security-oriented distribution based on Slackware Linux: “NetSecL 2.4 released. It’s time for the new release and here are the main highlights: X.Org drivers updated to newest; X.Org autostart is now being delayed a few seconds so you could break if it is needed – mainly handy if you need to change the driver used; Metasploit is updated to its latest version; Ruby is re-included; a new kernel configuration with better support for SATA drives (IDE is still available as a module); new tools, like 0trace, Dmitry and Evilgrade included in the penetration package; Dazuko is removed and replaced by Dazuko_FS; the CruxPorts4Slack portage system was used for generating all packages tagged as NetSecL packages.” Here is the brief release announcement. Download the installation CD from here: netsecl-2.4-install.iso (675MB, MD5).

Woah! Is it just me or has this thing gotten dusty? Outdated ChangeLogs, outdated SlackBuilds, there’s outdated everything! A lot has changed with Slackware since the last post. It’s time to try and shake the dust off again and try to make the Slackware Blog useful to the Slackware community.

There’s just one problem. Why does the Slackware Blog exist? Without a clear purpose the Slackware Blog is bound to become outdated again. So, what do you want to see from us? What useful service can we provide?

Personally, I think that the Slackware Blog should be a place where you can come to find out what is happening in the world of Slackware at a glance. At least every other week it would be nice to get a summary of what is going on with Slackware and the major Slackware sites/projects. Just the key points from log files, community news, and major changes to key Slackware sites.

Finding out what is “important” will take some time and tweaking, but with community help the Slackware Blog can once again be useful!

Wed Jun 18 14:42:48 CDT 2008
xap/mozilla-firefox-3.0-i686-1.tgz: Upgraded to firefox-3.0.
Congratulations to the Firefox people for the nice improvements, as well as
such an impressive number of first-day downloads. :-) We didn’t put this
out yesterday, figuring it was better to let people download from them…

Sat Jun 14 11:14:22 CDT 2008
slackware/l/jre-6u10_beta-i586-1.tgz: Upgraded to Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard
Edition Runtime Environment Version 6.0 update 10 beta. This is a BETA
VERSION and may contain problems, but it may also fix an issue with CUPS
printing. If this fix is important to you, it may be worth giving this
package a try at your own risk. For now, -current seems like the only prudent
place for this package. Hopefully we will see official 6u10 releases soon.
extra/jdk-6/jdk-6u10_beta-i586-1.tgz: Upgraded to Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard
Edition Development Kit Version 6.0 update 10 beta. This is a BETA VERSION
but should fix a problem with CUPS printing. See above.

Tue May 27 22:12:01 CDT 2008
a/mkinitrd-1.3.2-i486-3.tgz: Initialize RAID earlier so that the combination
of RAID+LUKS+LVM works. Thanks to Eric Hameleers.
xap/rdesktop-1.6.0-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to rdesktop-1.6.0.
According to the rdesktop ChangeLog, this contains a:
“* Fix for potential vulnerability against compromised/malicious servers
(reported by iDefense)”
This package build also includes the new alsa driver (–with-sound=alsa),
though I couldn’t get local sound redirection. Perhaps it was just my
command line error though, so the driver remains included for testing.
For more information on the security issue, see: